VIDEO OF THE WEEK / Maybe critics who panned 'The Outsiders' when it came out in '83 were just too old to understand. It's out now on DVD.

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 20, 2005

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(NYT14) TULSA, Okla. -- Sept. 7, 2005 -- HINTON-OUTSIDERS-2 -- From Left, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze and Tom Cruise in the 1983 film "The Outsiders," directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film is being released in theaters and on DVD in a new cut by its director. (Warner Home Video) XNYZ less

VIDEO OF THE WEEK / Maybe critics who panned 'The Outsiders' when it came out in '83 were just too old to understand. It's out now on DVD.

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Upon first look, "The Outsiders" seems like a bizarre movie to get the spare-no-expense expanded DVD treatment.

Filmed and released in 1983, when Francis Ford Coppola's studio was imploding, the director's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel was one of his least favorably reviewed movies -- falling somewhere between "Gardens of Stone" and "Jack." The worst part was, "The Outsiders" may have even deserved it, if nothing else for containing dozens of too-obvious metaphors, groan-inducing lines and character names that sounded like porn actors.

So how in the name of Cherry Valance did it become a classic?

For starters, the story about animosity between youth in different social classes was a masterpiece of casting. Coppola and producer Fred Roos went eight-for-eight with the lead characters, including Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane in secondary roles. They all remain household names 22 years later.

But more than anything, "The Outsiders" is a reminder that audiences, not critics, decide which movies will endure. Even though the Siskels and Eberts of the time didn't think much about "The Outsiders," the movie spoke volumes to teenagers. If all the critics in 1983 were 13 years old, it might have swept the Oscars.

If you were a young teen in the early 1980s, you probably couldn't care less when the "Gandhi" DVD set is coming out. But the idea of a souped-up "Outsiders" DVD -- with 22 minutes of new scenes, a revamped Elvis-infused soundtrack and documentary footage from the set -- is sort of like being able to purchase the Dead Sea Scrolls at Best Buy.

Hinton's "The Outsiders" was my generation's "Huck Finn" and Grand Theft Auto -- both art and contraband. When I picked up the book off a school shelf as a 12-year-old in early 1983, and was introduced in the first scene to Hinton's world of switchblades and beat-downs, the first feeling it invoked was guilt. As millions of young men and women had wondered since the book came out in the late 1960s, I questioned: Was I supposed to be reading this?

When the movie premiered, later in 1983, most kids didn't know who Coppola was, and the last thing we wanted to see was his artistic interpretation of the material -- we merely wanted to finally get a visual of the book that made us love reading, with good casting and as few changes as possible. "The Outsiders" delivered that, with a script that was almost as literal in translating Hinton's words as Robert Rodriguez's recent frame-for-frame retelling of Frank Miller's "Sin City."

I now realize that the qualities that made teens love the movie "The Outsiders" are the same things that made adults hate it. Coppola fans were still holding out hope that he would make another movie like "The Godfather," and anything less ambitious would be a disappointment. Critics wanted a movie with complexities, and "The Outsiders" was as subtle as a game of Whack-a-Mole, slamming viewers over the head repeatedly with each plot point, character trait and emotion.

As children who enjoyed the movie, our biggest complaint centered on the length: For some reason, this Coppola guy left out the beginning and end of the book. Sure most of the big lines were there ("Ponyboy ... I liked you from the start." ... "Do it for Johnny!"), but we still needed our imaginations to fill in some of the blanks, because at least a third of the book wasn't in the movie.

Which makes this DVD set something of a holy relic, even if the film is widely viewed as mediocre. Among the added bookend of scenes, the first few are particularly important -- setting up the "Party of Three" relationship between orphaned brothers Darrel (Patrick Swayze), Sodapop (Rob Lowe) and Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell).

The DVD set, billed as "The Outsiders: The Complete Novel," also includes a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes material, including screen tests for Kate Capshaw, Helen Slater, Adam Baldwin and Anthony Michael Hall, who reads for the Ponyboy role. ("Nature's first green is gold," the still-scrawny Hall recites dutifully, in the exact same "Sixteen Candles" voice he later used to say "Clean fresh breath is a priority of life.")

I vaguely recall the movie being homoerotic in 1983, and during the several scenes where the kids from the bad side of town talk about their feelings, I couldn't help nervously wondering if Howell and Ralph Macchio were going to start making out. These themes are amplified tenfold in a new scene where Howell and Lowe crawl in the same bed with the lights off, and talk quietly while spooning each other for what seems like 10 minutes.

The sad part about watching the movie in 2005 is the realization that as adults in our mid-30s -- and, in my case, the same type of movie critic who would have panned this film 22 years ago -- we didn't stay gold long enough to appreciate this director's cut as it was intended.

No matter how much bonus footage is added, "The Outsiders" still doesn't answer several enduring questions that would only occur to adults: How did the fire start at the church? Why on earth would so many people wear white pants to a rumble? And why does older brother Darrel, who seemed like such a cool authority figure in 1983, appear so reckless today? ("You smoke more than a pack today, and I'll kill you," he says to 14-year-old Ponyboy, before allowing him to participate in an organized fistfight.)

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The same types of questions materialize when watching John Hughes films, including the equally mediocre-yet-beloved "The Breakfast Club." It seems impossibly preposterous now, but there was a time when many of us thought the guy who played the principal in that movie deserved an Academy Award.

Then again, who's to say he didn't? If "The Outsiders" proved nothing else, a movie's greatness is something that takes a little time to sort out.

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